PEP 3131: Supporting Non-ASCII Identifiers

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Tue, 15 May 2007 14:44:44 +0200, Anton Vredegoor wrote:

> HYRY wrote:
>>> - should non-ASCII identifiers be supported? why?
>> Yes. I want this for years. I am Chinese, and teaching some 12 years
>> old children learning programming. The biggest problem is we cannot use
>> Chinese words for the identifiers. As the program source becomes
>> longer, they always lost their thought about the program logic.
> 
> That is probably because they are just entering the developmental phase
> of being able to use formal operational reasoning. I can understand that
> they are looking for something to put the blame on but it is an error to
> give in to the idea that it is hard for 12 year olds to learn a foreign
> language. You realize that children learn new languages a lot faster
> than adults?

Children soak up new languages between the ages of about one and four. By 
12, they're virtually adults as far as learning new languages.


> Again, it's probably not the language but the formal logic they have
> problems with. 

You have zero evidence for that, you're just applying your own 
preconceptions and ignoring what HYRY has told you.


> Please do *not* conclude that some child is not very good
> at math or logic or programming when they are slow at first.

You're the one saying they're having problems with logic, not HYRY. He's 
saying they are having problems with English.



-- 
Steven.